Jacques Maritain and Alasdair MacIntyre on Human Rights

337 Pages·2013·1.73 MB·English

by  Carrie Stibora

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Jacques Maritain and Alasdair MacIntyre on Human Rights

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

School of Philosophy

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

©

Copyright

All Rights Reserved

By

Carrie Rose Stibora

Washington, D.C.

2013
Jacques Maritain and Alasdair MacIntyre on Human Rights

Carrie Rose Stibora, Ph.D.

Director: V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D.

This dissertation is an examination of the two divergent positions on human rights taken
by prominent Catholic and Thomist philosophers Jacques Maritain and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Maritain and MacIntyre, although having traveled similar paths, which included atheism,
Marxism, anti-liberalism, seemingly have diametrically opposed position on the use of human
rights.
Maritain's work, including engagement with the drafting of the U.N. Declaration of
Human Rights (1948), redefined human rights as an extension of the natural law tradition rooted
in the work of Thomas Aquinas. Maritain's unique definition of rights included such notions as
personalism, the common good, justice and had a basis in classical metaphysics.
MacIntyre, on the other hand, rejects human rights because of their liberal provenance,
maintaining that rights language is a necessary band-aid to motivate individuals to help those less
fortunate in society where community, the common good and family have been significantly
weakened because of liberalism.
Starting with John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council up through Benedict XVI,
Maritain's articulation of rights influenced several popes. It has become the stock language of the
Catholic Church, despite centuries of pontiffs rebuking liberalism and rights language. With the
understanding that rights can in fact be viewed as an extension of the natural law, rights language
is now the preferred mode of speaking within the Church about the common good and human
dignity.
Delving deeper into the notion of tradition constituted rationality, MacIntyre sees the
importance of being a part of a tradition for practical rationality. Having allied himself to
Catholicism and the tradition of Thomistic Aristotelianism, MacIntyre emphasizes the
importance of operating within the tradition, despite whatever deficiencies it may have. As a
result, he abandons his own criticisms of human rights, as evidenced in two advanced stages of
his career: 1) one of relative silence on the subject, engaging the word choice instead of rights; and
2) coming around to a position where he recognizes that rights do in fact exist, but need to be
couched within an understanding of the common good, justice, and generosity – elements that
mimic Maritain's own articulation and that of the Catholic Church.
This dissertation by Carrie Rose Stibora fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral
degree in Philosophy approved by V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D., as Director, and by Gregory T.
Doolan, Ph.D., and Angela McKay Knobel, Ph.D. as Readers.

V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D., Director

Gregory T. Doolan, Ph.D., Reader

Angela McKay Knobel, Ph.D., Reader
ii
For Susan Louise Gress-Andrews and Joseph Allen Stibora, Ph.D.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................1
1. WHY RIGHTS NOW...............................................................................................................1
2. WHY MARITAIN AND MACINTYRE?......................................................................................2
3. CONNECTIONS......................................................................................................................4
4. METHOD..............................................................................................................................8
5. LAYOUT OF THE CHAPTERS..................................................................................................9
6. WHICH RIGHTS?.................................................................................................................12
7. POPE LEO XIII'S INFLUENCE...............................................................................................14
CHAPTER ONE: MARITAIN'S PRE-MODERN AND MODERN MÉLANGE..............24
1. MARITAIN PRIOR TO RIGHTS..............................................................................................25
2. MARITAIN'S EMBRACE OF RIGHTS......................................................................................34
3. SEA CHANGE IN ECCLESIASTICAL LANGUAGE.....................................................................43
4. WHO WAS FIRST? PIUS XI OR MARITAIN?..........................................................................52
5. LIBERAL, BUT…................................................................................................................55
6. CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................................57
CHAPTER TWO: REDEFINING RIGHTS - THE KEY ELEMENTS..............................59
PART I – CHRISTIAN HUMANISM...........................................................................................60
1. BIG PICTURE OF MARITAIN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.........................................................60
2. PERSONALISM....................................................................................................................62
3. THE COMMON GOOD..........................................................................................................74
4. NATURAL LAW..................................................................................................................78
PART II - DEFINITION OF RIGHTS..........................................................................................81
1. IUS.....................................................................................................................................84
2. NATURAL LAW IN THE WORKING DEFINITION.....................................................................86
3. ETERNAL LAW...................................................................................................................91
4. CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................................93
CHAPTER THREE: MARITAIN'S CRITICS....................................................................94
1. LIBERAL RIGHTS VS. CATHOLIC THOUGHT..........................................................................94
2. THE CRISIS AND CRITICS OF INTEGRAL HUMANISM...............................................................99
3. THOMAS'S NATURAL LAW................................................................................................112
4. TOO THEOLOGICAL..........................................................................................................120
5. TOO PHILOSOPHICAL?......................................................................................................126
6. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................130
CHAPTER FOUR: MARITAIN AND THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING
TRADITION.........................................................................................................................131
1. SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL AND POPE PAUL VI...............................................................132
2. JOHN PAUL II (1978 - 2005).............................................................................................142
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3. BENEDICT XVI (2005 - 2013)..........................................................................................155
4. BEYOND THE PAPACY ......................................................................................................158
5. THE PEASANT'S FALLOUT.................................................................................................160
6. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................165
CHAPTER FIVE: MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE QUEST..............................................167
1. TRIPARTIONED CAREER....................................................................................................170
2. STAGE I - MARX (1946 - 1971)........................................................................................172
3. INTERLOCKING PIECES FROM MARX.................................................................................181
4. ANTI-LIBERALISM, ANTI-CAPITALISM..............................................................................182
5. HISTORICIZING MAN........................................................................................................187
6. PRACTICE AND THEORY....................................................................................................188
7. STAGE II ARISTOTLE AND AFTER VIRTUE (1971 - 1984).....................................................191
8. VIRTUE AND PRACTICES...................................................................................................196
9. FROM PRACTICES TO NARRATIVE QUEST..........................................................................202
10. LIVING AND DEAD TRADITIONS......................................................................................205
11. STAGE III THOMISM AND TRADITION (1984 - )................................................................207
12. CONVERSION..................................................................................................................209
13. TRADITION AND RATIONALITY.......................................................................................212
14. CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................217
CHAPTER SIX: MACINTYRE'S ARGUMENTS AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS..........219
1. STAGE I – MARX..............................................................................................................219
2. STAGE II – ARISTOTLE AND AFTER VIRTUE (1971 - 1983)..................................................222
3. STAGE III – THOMISM AND TRADITION (1984 - 2000).......................................................240
4. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................256
CHAPTER SEVEN: MACINTYRE'S CRITICS...............................................................258
1. WITCHES AND UNICORNS.................................................................................................259
2. NO GOOD REASONS TO BELIEVE.......................................................................................263
3. THEOLOGY – TOO MUCH AND NOT ENOUGH ....................................................................265
4. EMOTIONALISM................................................................................................................269
5. UNIVERSAL AXIOMS AND HISTORICAL PARTICULARS........................................................272
6. THOMISM AND UNIVERSALS.............................................................................................276
7. CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT............................................................................................279
8. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................282
CHAPTER EIGHT: MACINTYRE REINVENTED.........................................................284
1. STAGE IV - RELATIVE SILENCE (1999 - 2007)..................................................................284
2. LIBERTY OF CHOICE.........................................................................................................289
3. CHOICE OF RELATIONSHIPS..............................................................................................290
4. STAGE V – RIGHTS TRANSFORMED? (2008 - )..................................................................292
5. WHY THE CHANGE?.........................................................................................................295
6. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................301
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CONCLUSION: FINAL THOUGHTS...............................................................................303
1. MACINTYRE ON MARITAIN...............................................................................................303
2. ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................306
BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................311

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Jacques Maritain and Alasdair MacIntyre on Human Rights
Carrie R. Stibora, Ph.D. (Cand.)
Director: V. Bradley Lewis Ph.D.

Introduction
1. Why Rights Now
Human rights have a virtual monopoly on contemporary political discourse, having
emerged as the preferred mode of ethical rhetoric over the past five or six decades. Human rights
rhetoric, however, is not without its weaknesses. Contemporary struggles related to human rights
concern issues of definition, such as who has human rights? Do rights extend to animals? The
environment? And what about when the rights of one individual clash with another, as in the
case of abortion? Does the mother's right to abortion trump her child's right to life? And how far
do human rights extend? Is there a right to gay marriage? Is there a right to health care? Is there a
right to biologically and surgically change one's gender? Do such rights entail taxpayer funding?
And on and on and on… Such questions about human rights seem to go as far as one's
imagination, without any sort of clear boundary to keep check on the limits of rights. Mary Ann
Glendon has complained that the situation is such that political and moral discourse has been
impoverished by "the modern inclination to force all controversial issues into a straitjacket of
rights talk."1

1 Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and
Church Law 1150-1625 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001),
346.
1
2
Over the centuries, the Catholic Church made its way to embracing rights in an effort to
protect the dignity of every human person. After World War II, "the international community
began in earnest to adopt lists, charters, and declarations of human rights, but this process was
well under way in Catholic thought two decades earlier as a way to reckon with totalitarian
regimes."2
While the centrality of rights inside and outside the Church does not seem controversial
in today's political climate, this was not always so. Liberalism and Americanism were long
considered to be the poor fruit of modernity, which threatened much of the Church's
philosophical and theological framework. After initially rejecting liberalism and its fruit of
human rights language, more than a modus vivendi, the Church has come to identify much of
Catholic social teaching with human rights promotion.3

2. Why Maritain and MacIntyre?
Two Catholic converts and philosophers, Jacques Maritain (1882 - 1973) and Alasdair
MacIntyre (1929 - ), in their respective works offer insights into the both the old and new
intellectual traditions in relation to Catholic social thought on rights. Moreover, they, each in his
unique way, bring forth much to the discussion about rights.

Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York:
The Free Press, 1991).
2 Russell Hittinger, "Introduction to Modern Catholicism," in The Teachings of Modern
Roman Catholicism on Law, Politics and Human Nature, eds. John Witte Jr. and Frank S.
Alexander, 1-38 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 18.
3 For a through discussion of the Church's transition from anti-liberal to liberal, see Emile
Perreau-Saussine, Catholicism and Democracy: An Essay in the History of Political Thought,
trans. Richard Rex (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).